Studies in the Origins of Buddhism c8.32

c8.32

Early features of the Sutta.—All this goes to enhance the impression of antiquity made by the Sāmaññaphala°, which is not only clearest in this respect, but in which the enumeration of the heresies follows organically from a context reminiscent of Bṛ. IV. I. Oldenberg’s suggestion of an imitation here of the Upaniṣadic setting¹⁶ is quite unwarranted. The situation described in the Pali sutta could well have resulted as naturally from the multiplicity of contemporary teachers plus the philosophical interest that king Ajātasattu is reported in the sutta to have had, as the one in the Upaniṣad did from the similar interest of Janaka in a not very dissimilar atmosphere of thought-ferment. Since there seems to be no reason to doubt this obvious explanation of the partial resemblance in form of the two texts, a resort to the hypothesis of literary borrowing is hard to justify.